Category Archives: Judiciary

trump’s attempted coup – Day 2

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(January 4 – The Georgia Telephone Call)

No sooner had I posted the first installment of this series of columns when events overran its contents. Yesterday the Washington Post released the audio recording of a sixty-plus minute telephone conversation Donald Trump had the day before with the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger. Raffensperger, a Republican, and Trump have been at odds for weeks. Trump insisting that he won the vote in Georgia but was the victim of massive vote fraud and Raffensperger, noting that he supported and voted for Trump, certifying that Biden was the victor by a margin of 11,779 votes.

Please, listen to the audio and read the transcript and make up your own mind.

When I heard it, my thoughts immediately turned to the first time I heard Richard Nixon’s voice on a recording discussing the Watergate break-in. He was considering having the CIA block the FBI from investigating the connection between the burglars of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Nixon reelection committee.

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trump’s attempted coup

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(January 3)

Two months since the election and only today do I write about the outcome. That is because, unbelievably, the outcome is still not 100% certain. I had prepared the graphic within days of November 3, 2020. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, two leaders-elect. And an empty room representing the loser, Donald Trump, who refused to concede and sulked off into retreat. The two leaders are the unquestionable victors receiving 81 million votes. The most of any presidential ticket in history. And 306 electoral college votes, the same number as Trump received in 2016.

In all this time, Trump has refused to admit defeat. Trump and his acolytes continue to maintain a fantasy that he really won, and won it “bigly.” They have fought the battle to validate their alternate reality by whatever means available. Trump got 74 million votes, they argue. More than he got in 2016. How could he have lost? Easy. Biden got 7 million votes more. And flipped five states Trump won in his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton.

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The Handmaid already has blood on her hands

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The Daily Mail produced the wonderful graphic above to go with a story published October 3, 2020. The photo was taken on September 26 and shows the crowd gathered in the White House Rose Garden as Donald Trump introduced Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, filling the seat which became vacant upon the death on September 18 of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In its October 3 story the Mail reported that nine of the people who attended this event had, at that point, tested positive for the Covid-19 virus. As the picture demonstrates, few of the 100 or so people who attended wore face masks, and all were sitting close together. On October 9, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, labeled this as a “Superspreader event.”

An October 5 poll report said more than 9 out of 10 Americans wear a face mask when they leave home. But that clearly does not include Donald Trump, our Covid denying superspreader-in-chief. Nor apparently does it include Amy Coney Barrett, whose nomination was rammed through the Senate on a strict partisan vote and who took her seat on October 27. America’s newest associate justice wants to be sure you can attend superspreader events too.

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the notorious supreme court

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Before we get to the travesty that is the Republican’s 30 day sprint to ram a right-wing ideologue judge down our throats, let us take a minute to take note of the last occupant of the seat she is filling.

I can’t get over the picture above. At least 1000 people, maybe more, gathered in front of the Supreme Court building in the evening of September 18th to mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They were peaceful, quiet, many cried, some carried candles, all in their own way feeling a great sense of loss. They continued to come through the weekend, bringing flowers, newspaper front pages and pictures of Ginsburg.

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Trump’s gestapo comes to portland

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Hard to believe but the fears I raised in my last column have now been realized and the situation is far worse.

The headlines exploded around the world on the morning of July 15th, summed up best by this Oregon PBS report, “Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protestors Off Portland Streets.”

It is positively frightening. And it can happen to you. It can happen to me. It can happen to any one of us.

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A Clear and Present Danger

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I’ve been avoiding this issue for months. I just got tired about writing about Donald J. Trump. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that he simply could not keep up the pace. He could not commit, every single day of his administration, a bigger travesty than the one he had committed the day before.

I was wrong.

So here is the first of what will be a long stretch of blogs on Trump and the nation. The Trump reaction to a week of protests is just the latest manifestation. The groundwork had already been laid and was in the open for everyone to see. Take a look at April 17, 2020, the day a sitting President of these United States incited violent revolution. Here were Trump’s tweets:

Three calls to arms, to “LIBERATE,” one invoking the 2nd Amendment on gun ownership, all directed at states with popularly elected Democratic governors, who just happened to offend Trump in one way or another.

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The Justices Take a Landmark Step. Unwillingly.

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Mark your calendar. Beginning May 4 and ending May 13, the Supreme Court of the United States will make history. It took the coronavirus pandemic to do it, but over six dates the Court will hear oral arguments on ten cases, and the people of the United States will be able for the first time to hear those arguments as they happen.

This is happening because the Court, like most of us, is practicing Covid-19 social distancing protocols, with the justices and staff working mostly from their homes. The Court first delayed these arguments, then decided to hold the hearings via teleconference.

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